BY ZANNY BEGG
SYDNEY — Despite widespread community opposition the New South Wales government is pushing ahead with plans to build a $48 million jail for women in western Sydney.
The new jail will be called Dillwynia (after an endangered plant which grows in the area) and is expected to be operational by 2002-2003. Tenders have been issued for the site and construction could begin as early as September.
The government has justified the new jail on the basis of the appalling conditions for women incarcerated at Mulawa, but has simultaneously given no assurances that any part of Mulawa Correctional Centre will be closed down once the new jail is operational.
Those opposing the jail have tried to shift the debate from "how to accommodate women prisoners" to "how to reduce the number of women serving time in jail" by calling for a moratorium on any new jail beds for women.
Over the last four years of the Labor government there has been a 40% increase in the number of women serving time in jail. Two-thirds of these women are imprisoned for non-violent property-related offences. The vast bulk of these offences are drug-related, with recent estimates from the Department of Corrective Services showing that between 72-95% of women in jail have some form of drug or alcohol dependency.
Those women who are sentenced to jail are often the most disadvantaged within society. In NSW indigenous women make up 23% of the female prison population (but less then 2% of the total population).
The rising rates of incarceration impacts not only on the women being sent to jail but their families, lovers and friends. Over 60% of women in jail are parents, with 30-40% of these being the sole carer of their children.
The Department of Corrective Services has claimed that more women are being sent to prison because of an increase in women committing violent crime.
The evidence for this, however, is highly disputable. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology the crime rate has remained relatively stable, reported homicide rates have remained stable over the last four years and the number of reported assaults increased by only 1.5% in the last year.
The logic of the government's position is further undone by the high rates of recidivism amongst female inmates. Rather then being a solution to the problem of crime, drug dependency or violence, a term in prison can become just part of an ongoing destructive cycle.
Over half of the 480 women in jail in NSW have been in prison before. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait women, about 70% have been in prison before.
The cost to taxpayers is between $40,000 and $70,000 a year for every woman in jail. This figure does not include the thousands more it takes to re-integrate the inmate post-release, the money that may need to be spent if the inmate's children become state wards or the loss of income generation by keeping women locked up.
The new women's jail is part of a $120 million package which the government will spend on constructing new jails in NSW. The new women's jail has attracted the most public condemnation but also of concern is a new jail being built in Kempsey and plans for a possible new jail in Dubbo.
It is rumoured that the Department of Corrective Services' assistant commissioner is pushing for the construction of new jails close to Aboriginal communities. His rationale is that offenders will be close to their communities, but a more ominous reading of this is that Aboriginal communities will continue to be criminalised and locked away.
The Stop the Women's Jail Campaign has launched an Anti-Prison Resource Kit which you can obtain by calling Renee and Noha on 9281 5100. For more information about the No New Women's Jail Campaign, call Mindy Sortiri on 9288 8700.